The European team has been busy attending, addressing and hosting events in 2018, all with the purpose to promote Western Australia to Europe, UK and Israel. Here is a wrap-up of three key events and missions during the final quarter of the year.

WA Wine Tasting event in October

On 4th of October we hosted our own WA Wine Tasting event at Australia House in London.

This was the fourth year in a row that we invited trade and consumers to taste a selection of premium wine from some of Western Australia’s nine wine regions. The event was a huge success with 34 wineries up on stage showcasing their ultra-premium wines.

The United Kingdom is Western Australia’s second biggest market by aggregated volume and value. In contrast to all of Australia, the average price per litre achieved by WA in the UK is rather high ($8.95 v $3.87). Whereas a lot of Australian bulk wine comes into to the UK for the Tesco and other supermarket trade, WA largely sells as regionally branded and bottled product.

The event was sponsored by Qantas and Westpac.

Smart City Expo World Congress in November

In mid-November we visited Barcelona to attend the Smart City Expo World Congress. We were joined by 20,000 visitors from 700 cities across the world.

The strong message we received was that Smart Cities are about healthy and happy citizens, social inclusion, education, resilience, reducing the climate change impact, and using technology as an enabler to achieve all this. Trending technologies include AI, blockchain, AR, VR, 5G and big data.

As Trudy Norris-Grey from Microsoft put it: “We’re in a game changing moment” followed by addressing the need to collaborate for a better and more connected future.

On that note the European office has made great connections with local government and smart city organisations in Stockholm, Berlin, Manchester, London and Tallinn.

"We believe WA has a great role to play at a global level with its strength in blockchain, immersive technology, big data and cyber security and it's our role to connect the state with the world," said Charlotta Andresson, Trade & Investment Manager at Government of Western Australia's European office.

AICC-WA Trade Mission to Israel

Towards the end of November Agent General Mike Deeks joined a WA delegation to Israel. The program was characterised by several themes including innovation, defence, smart cities, medical and cultural.

Israel has a strong innovation community and the delegates visited Austrade’s Landing Pad, Microsoft’s ScaelUp centre, Deloitte’s StartUp incubator, and Tel Aviv University which hosts several incubators and accelerator for a wide range of industries.

The delegates also visited a couple of incredible hospital facilities which also host a number of medical start-ups, again proof of Israel’s strong innovation culture.

Agent General concluded that Israel provides a fertile ground for innovation, start-ups, scale-ups and venture capital, a perfect place for WA SMEs and startups to commercialise their innovative products or services. There are also many lessons WA could learn from Israel in how they structure and manage incubators and accelerators for innovation.

Contributions, videos and images supplied by:Western Australia Government: Department of Agriculture, Department of Fisheries, Department of Mines and Petroleum, Department of Premier and CabinetDepartment of State Development, Tourism WA, The University of Western Australia, Australian Marine Complex, Small Business Development Corporation, Department of Training and Workforce Development, Department of Health, Elyse Marks Imaging